1 Answer
1

You can plan and arrange your whole holiday from the comfort of your own home.

You never have to go through the hell of trying to get berths on a train, if you book all your trains from home.

Air-Conditioned Classes are good value if booking all your trains from home.

Showing an Air-Conditioned Class Indiarail pass to an official can sometimes magicaly make a berth available when all else fails.

An Indrail pass can be used when just jumping on a train for a short journey without the need to buy a ticket.

Against the Indrail pass:

You would need to travel by train regularly to get the benefit from the pass.

They do cost more money.

Planning everything in advance is not always a good idea, you may like a place more than you thought you would but have to move on, or dislike a place and be stuck there for too long.

If you get ill it can ruin your plans.

You may not like the class of travel you have chosen to travel in.

If you are not planning the whole holiday from home you will still need to get reservations for the trains you choose to travel on (getting reservations is the hard part of purchasing tickets).

Queuing for tickets is part of the India experience and not that hard when you get used to it.

'Break of Journey' rules make buying tickets in India much cheaper and they are easy to book, 'Circular Journey' tickets are even cheaper, though a bit harder to book, details of both can be found in the Train Fares thread.

Travelling on the Indian Trains is generally safe as compared to other land transportation.